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Poverty and The Gospel. The Case of Haiti
Poverty and The Gospel. The Case of Haiti
Dieumeme Noelliste (PhD Northwestern) is Professor of Theological Ethics and Director of the Grounds
Institute for Public Ethics at Denver Seminary, Colorado USA. He was previously President of the Caribbean
Graduate School of Theology and of the Jamaica Theological Seminary. He studied law in his home country
at the State University of Haiti.
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tion of the country by the colonial powers in response to the success of the
Haitian revolution and the subsequent
proclamation of its independence from
France. Construed as a bad example
and a dangerous threat to the prevailing global colonial system, the powers
that held sway on the global scene
were determined to kill that chicken in
the egg. They did so by denying the
country its rightful place in the concert
of nations, arguing that such an admission would be detrimental to their economic interest and would deal a devastating blow to the reigning racist ideology. With its back against the wall,
Haiti was forced to pay a whopping
150,000,000 golden franks to France
in exchange for its recognition of the
countrys hard won independence.
Frances imprimatur was considered
by its colonial counterparts a prerequisite for their own recognition and the
subsequent ending of the global economic and political embargo that was
slapped against the fledgling and
embattled new nation.
It is well established practice that,
in wars, the winners get the spoils. In
Haitis case, however, the reverse
obtained! The victor was required to
reward the vanquished for the insolence of winning and the audacity of
cutting himself from the shackles of
oppression. Hence, instead of concentrating on building itself as a nation,
for the next hundred years, Haiti would
be forced to use its very meagre
resources to pay its debt to France. At
todays rate, the crushing indemnity
amounts to $21 billionthree times
the size of the countrys present GDP!
This was an injustice from which
the country would be hard pressed to
recover. Any question about its impact
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particular. All suffer from such reprehensible neglect, but the poor suffer
even more dearly.
Here again, I dont want to be misunderstood. The church and the
numerous social service agencies that
are working in the country have done a
lot to alleviate poverty and provide a
whole gamut of social services to
assist the poor. As bad as the Haitian
predicament is, it would have been
worse without their effort. But though
helpful and necessary, such action has
its limits. It cannot result in the establishment of the kind of structures and
institutions which are capable of transforming the centuries-old culture of
poverty. These can come only from the
political powers which have control
over all of the countrys resources. To
deliver these basic goods for the welfare of the society in general and the
poor in particular, they must be challenged, since it is not in their DNA to
do so unprompted.
In a context such as Haiti, to meaningfully serve the poor, the church can
no longer afford to preach a gospel
devoid of a political edge. To blunt that
edge is to nullify its transforming
potential and make it into an accomplice of the status quo. The political
directorate knows this well. That is
why it never tires of reminding the
church that its role is confined to the
spiritual and that it must not trespass
on the political. The church must reject
such reductionism and rigid dualism. It
needs to realize that because the
gospel aims at the enjoyment of the
fullness of life, this carries serious
political implications. The political
sphere bears enormously on the kind of
life that people live. Indeed, its very
reason for being is to promote and
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enhance the experience of life. Its purpose is to serve the common good. To
remove that sphere from the purview of
the gospel and exempt it from its critique is to castrate the gospel itself and
render it impotent in a society that desperately needs its transforming ferment.
It is beyond question that these
days of suffering, disgrace, and shame
are the darkest in the history of the
country. But they will not be its final
moments. In fact, I see in them a critical juncture, a turning point for a better tomorrow. I see in these calamities
the unprecedented opportunity for the
church to resolve to proclaim, live, and
demonstrate the full gospel in the Haitian context. Three factors combine to
make this moment opportune.
First, if anyone ever thought that it
was acceptable for a society to have a
completely unaccountable government, the tragedy of January 12 should
disabuse them of such a misguided
view. In the aftermath of the earthquake, it is evident to all that thousands of lives would have been saved if
the country were equipped with the
most basic disaster preparedness and
response system, and if it had a government that felt the obligation to provide a modicum of leadership in that
moment of crisis. Feeling completely
unanswerable, the government was
missing in action. And that irresponsiveness proved fatal not only to the
poor, but the rich as well. Until help
arrived from the international community, the people were their own first
responders, performing rescue operations with bare hands.
Second, while in the past, the
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